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Monday, 30 April 2012

Strawberries and white grubs

As the sun eventually peeked out for a couple of hours, I went out in the garden to start potting up a hanging basket - thinking I might try some strawberries with some trailing geraniums. When I dug up a couple of last years strawberry plants I noticed a collection of white grubs in the container among my plants. A little snoop around the internet brings up information on the Scarab Beetles, which include the June beetle, European chafer and Japanese beetle. As mine are 'active' now (late April. early May) I'm going to assume that they are the June beetle variety. Anyhow, I've whacked the root core of each strawberry plant, half a dozen grubs have fallen out onto the floor. Turning the whole container upside down I have tipped out all the dirt and picked out the little white grubs, laid them out on a platter, and now I've stepped back inside for a cup of tea to let the healthy bird population around here come in and feast!

On closer look, and more snooping around the internet, it looks like these might be strawberry root weavil (Brachyrhinus ovatus).

The closer image (below) is from a wonderful blog I discovered called garden therapy, while looking for information on the strawberry weavil. She had the same problem as mine - you can see her photo below - but overcame it and now has some mighty fine strawberries. I hope mine do half as well!!

What I also discovered while hopping around the internet, is that geraniums are toxic to white grubs!! Who knew!? So moving the strawberries to the hanging basket to see how they live together was a good move on both parts!

I'm building a list of beneficial companion planting and plan to create an app that will help gardeners with choosing beneficial plants for their own garden. If you have any experience of beneficial planting schemes of your own, please leave a comment over in the companion planting post so that I can include as many tried and tested beneficial companions as possible!